A health worker infected with Covid-19 would need to wait for 4-6 weeks for getting inoculated.
Ahead of Covid vaccine roll out on January 16 (Saturday), the ministry of health and family welfare has prepared detailed guidelines on special precautions to be taken. The ministry has also circulated to the states a comparative fact sheet for both Covishield and Covaxin which includes physical specifications, dosage, cold chain storage requirements, contraindications and minor adverse event following immunization (AEFI).
Following international protocols, the ministry has prescribed that a person who is suffering from Covid-19 would need to wait 4-6 weeks before getting inoculated. “This time would be calculated from the onset of symptoms in a symptomatic person and the first positive test in case of an asymptomatic patient,” said a senior health ministry official.
The guidelines prescribe that Covid-19 vaccine and aother vaccines should be separated by an interval of 14 days. No inter changeability of vaccine would take place. The guidelines clearly lay down “Second dose should also be of the same Covid-19 vaccine which was administered as the first dose.”
As first reported by ET in its January 9 edition, the ministry has also prescribed that a person who has been given monoclonal antibodies or plasma therapy would need to wait 4 to 6 weeks before taking the jab.
A detailed fact sheet has been provided on possible AEFI for both Covishield and Covaxin. For Covishield, mild AEFI include injection site tenderness, injection site pain, headache, fatigue, pain in muscle or group of muscles, malaise, fever, chills, join pain and nausea. For Covaxin, mild AEFI has been spelt out to include injection site pain, headache, fatigue, fever, body ache, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, dizziness, giddiness, tremor, sweating, cold, cough and injection site swelling.